"Peter Watts - Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

It's dying, of course, but slowly. It wouldn't care much about
that even if it knew.

*

Now something is tapping on its insides. Infinitesimal, precisely
spaced shock waves are marching in from somewhere ahead and
drumming against the machinery in its chest.
The reptile doesn't recognize the sound. It's not the intermittent
grumble of conshelf and sea bed pushing against each other. It's
not the low-frequency ATOC pulses that echo dimly past en route
to the Bering. It's a pinging noise тАФ metallic, Broca's area
murmurs, although it doesn't know what that means.
Abruptly, the sound intensifies.
The reptile is blinded by sudden starbursts. It blinks, a vestigial
act from a time it doesn't remember. The caps on its eyes darken
Home 3

automatically. The pupils beneath, hamstrung by the speed of
reflex, squeeze to pinpoints a few seconds later.
A copper beacon glares out from the darkness ahead тАФ too
coarse, too steady, far brighter than the bioluminescent embers that
sometimes light the way. Those, at least, are dim enough to see by;
the reptile's augmented eyes can boost even the faint twinkle of
deepwater fish and turn it into something resembling twilight. But
this new light turns the rest of the world stark black. Light is never
this bright, not sinceтАФ
From the cortex, a shiver of recognition.
It floats motionless, hesitating. It's almost aware of faint urgent
voices from somewhere nearby. But it's been following the same
course for as long it can remember, and that course points only one
way.
It sinks to the bottom, stirring a muddy cloud as it touches down.
It crawls forward along the ocean floor.
The beacon shines down from several meters above the sea bed.
At closer range it resolves into a string of smaller lights stretched
in an arc, like photophores on the flank of some enormous fish.
Broca sends down more noise: Sodium floods. The reptile
burrows on through the water, panning its face from side to side.
And freezes, suddenly fearful. Something huge looms behind
the lights, bloating gray against black. It hangs above the sea bed
like a great smooth boulder, impossibly buoyant, encircled by
lights at its equator. Striated filaments connect it to the bottom.
Something else, changes.
It takes a moment for the reptile to realize what's happened: the
drumming against its chest has stopped. It glances nervously from
shadow to light, light to shadow.
"You are approaching Linke Station, Aleutian Geothermal Array.
We're glad you've come back."
The reptile shoots back into the darkness, mud billowing behind